Hi all, relatively new to training and I’m really liking this tool vs the Strava premium trial I explored last month. Some guidance that I liked about Strava, however, is it would give load recommendations for the week, especially useful for a newbie like myself. I found it useful in managing my load, especially during a recovery week. Attached is an example telling me to keep my weekly load under 245 if I’m in a recovery week.
Is there a way for me to add a chart that can quickly help me figure out a load target for the week?
There are so many variables in figuring out what your load should be; age, free time, experience, goals, current load, current life stress, injury, etc. I’d suggest this would be best answered by a coach consult. You might try the “ask a coach” button found throughout the Intervals UI
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Totally agree there’s a lot of factors that go into it. The general guidelines seem to be limit increases to 10% weekly and for cutback/recovery weeks decrease the load by more than 20%
The calendar page shows total load and time for each week on the left hand side. So you can use that as a guide for your recovery week.
When I was getting back into cycling I read The cyclists Training Bible by Joe Friel. A very useful book that covers a lot of this. He is taking about TSS which should be the same as Load.
I also read last week on Gordo Byrn’s blog that he recommends your hardest day in a week is no more than twice your current fitness load. I can’t remember the link but it’s somewhere in here, and it’s an interesting read - Endurance Essentials - by Gordo Byrn - Endurance Essentials
Going back to your post you show the Strava suggested training range in your screenshot. I’ve never been able to find that formula documented anywhere, but when I was using Golden Cheetah I seemed to get pretty close by using a range of 75% - 160% of the previous 3 weeks’ average training load. The shape drawn by that seemed to match the Strava graph, so I used that for a while in Golden Cheetah
These days I’m planning the weekly numbers including harder / easier weeks on a spreadsheet and then updating that into a daily plan in intervals.icu
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Thanks for sharing that link. I’m thinking the spreadsheet route just might be the way to go for me too.
